Tsai fashionably late for first date with 'Mr Lucky'

Jolin Tsai splashed down at the Water Cube in Beijing on Tuesday to pick up a check from Warner Music for 30 million yuan ($4.4 million). Not bad for a night's work. The contract signing was set to begin at the auspicious time of 9:10 pm, for the reason that her first name sounds like "nine" and her Chinese name Yi-lin sounds like "10." For all that, she still turned up late.

Disappointingly, I could see no evidence of thermal underwear, which she had told journalists in Taipei she would be picking up in the capital city as she was expecting snow. Instead she wore black bootees and a silky pink dress with two square adornments over what may have been her breasts.

Warner Music Asia Pacific chief Lachie Rutherford introduced "Asia's top diva" and told reporters he had been after her for 10 years, "lost her" to EMI but was now banking on a "long-term relationship". It sounded a bit like a casting couch session. Tsai, in turn, thanked "Mr Lucky" in faultless Chinese but faltering English.